With each passing year, the evidence grows. Previously suppressed
census
data, photographs of soldiers guarding grain stores, accounts of local
uprisings -- all add more depth and detail to the horrendous story of
the
Holodomor, the name Ukrainians have given to the famine that killed
seven
to 10 million in 1932-33.

"There is a wealth of documentation coming out," says historian
Roman
Serbyn of this dark chapter in the history of the Soviet Union.
"Historians
have trouble keeping up," adds the retired professor, who continues to
research the Holodomor.

Information has been emerging since the demise of the Soviet Union,
he says. A significant trove came to light last year when another cache
of Soviet secret police (KGB) files was released.

This trickle of documentation is one of the reasons the term
Holodomor
is unfamiliar to most. And why, 75 years later, Ukrainians still seek
recognition
for what they call a genocide, perpetrated by Soviet leader Josef
Stalin.

As part of the campaign to increase Holodomor awareness, the
International
Remembrance Flame is expected to arrive in Ottawa on Monday, the last
of
16 stops in Canada. The flame's journey through Canada is organized by
the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Embassy of Ukraine.
Stefan Horlatsch, an 87-year-old

Holodomor survivor, is accompanying the torch on its Canadian
journey.
As a child he watched as Soviet authorities seized his family's land,
livestock
and grain. He lost 11 family members to starvation.

The Remembrance Flame then travels to the United States as part of a
world tour that includes 33 countries.

The most important fact to remember about the Holodomor is that the
famine was not caused by drought or pestilence. "It was part of
Stalin's
plan to transform the U.S.S.R. into a mighty power and what he needed
for
that was industrialization," says
Mr. Serbyn, who was co-editor of the 2007 book, Famine in
Ukraine:
Genocide by Other Means.

Stalin's intention was to pay for industrialization by the export of
grain. "Ukraine was the granary of Russia," says Mr. Serbyn.

In 1929, the drive to collectivize agriculture began. This process
was
viewed as essential to the development of a Communist state. Mr. Serbyn
sees it differently. Collectivization, he observes dryly, "is a more
efficient
way of confiscating food for export."

At first, resistance was fierce. "Literally millions of people were
involved in strikes and local uprisings," says Mr. Serbyn. "Soviet
administrators
were chased from the villages."

The bulk of the resistance came from a class of landowners known as
kulaks. Because of their opposition Stalin set out to destroy them.
Their
land was seized and they were not allowed to join the collectives. Many
were shot or deported to northern Russia. This process, known as
dekulakization,
deprived villages of their leadership. With resistance quashed, quotas
were established and the peasants had to deliver the grain themselves.

The 1931 harvest was 18.3 million tons of grain, five million of
which
were exported. By the following year, the quotas were so high the
farmers
were not able to fulfil them. Orders were given to hand over the seed.

At the height of the famine, it is estimated that 25,000 Ukrainian
villagers
a day were dying. At the same time, it is now known that there were 1.8
million tons of grain in state reserves. "We have photographs of guards
guarding the locations," says Mr. Serbyn.

"All the government had to do was to stop exporting and release the
grain," he says. "Instead they denied people were starving."

With most of the deaths in isolated villages, there is no way of
knowing
how many died, but the long-suppressed census figures of 1937 reveal
that
the number of Ukrainians within the Soviet Union was 26.4 million,
almost
five million less than in 1926.

Collectivization and dekulakization were not limited to Ukraine and
people starved in other parts of the Soviet Union. Why then, do the
Ukrainian
people insist on calling the famine a genocide?

Mr. Serbyn says there were actions aimed specifically at Ukrainians
that support the definition of genocide, which, according to the United
Nations, is an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnic,
racial or religious group.

In 1929, a number of Ukrainian intellectuals were arrested and
blamed
for organizing the peasantry. There were show trials, said Mr. Serbyn,
"staged in a theatre, very symbolical."

About 45 academics and political leaders were executed, exiled, or
imprisoned.

In 1931, the Ukrainian language was outlawed.

On Jan. 22, 1932, with famine raging, the borders of Ukraine were
closed
to prevent the starving from going in search of food.

The eight million Ukrainians living outside Ukraine were also
targeted.
The Kuban, an area in the Northern Caucasus populated by the
descendants
of Ukrainian cossacks, was also cordoned off. Entire cossack
settlements
were deported to northern Russia.

Holodomor combines the Ukrainian words holod (famine) and moryty (to
exhaust) to mean destroy by famine. The similarities to the word
Holocaust
are not coincidental, says Mr. Serbyn.

Just as Holocaust has come to mean the genocide of six million Jews
by the Nazis during the Second World War, so Holodomor has come to mean
the genocide of the Ukrainian people.

Allied troops discovered the Nazi death camps. The images haunt us
still.

In Ukraine in 1932-33, any photographs were taken clandestinely. The
Soviet government denied the famine, refused foreign aid and ordered
members
of the foreign press to remain in Moscow.

As late as the 1980s a book was published calling the famine a
fraud.

"It was denied and fell out of the collective memory, not only in
the
West, but even in Ukraine," says Mr. Serbyn. "People who lived through
it didn't want to talk about it. It was dangerous to talk about it."

Soviet historians focused on Ukraine's suffering during the Second
World
War. "Even today, some of the older people hang on to those beliefs,
and
to them Hitler, and not Stalin, was the great enemy of the Ukrainian
people."

In 2006, the Ukrainian parliament declared the Holodomor to be a
genocide.
At least 14 other jurisdictions have passed similar resolutions,
including
Australia, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, and, most recently, Latvia. Canada
may soon follow. A private member's bill, which would recognize the
Holodomor
as an act of genocide and declare a Holodomor memorial day, has been
given
second reading.

Recognition from Canada is important, says Ihor Ostash, Ukraine's
ambassador
to Canada, because there are 1.2 million Canadians of Ukrainian
descent.
Recognition will also lend weight to Ukraine's campaign to have the
Holodomor
declared a genocide by the United Nations.

Says
Mr.
Serbyn, "This is a tragedy to be recognized by the world. This is
justice
that has to be done."